Florida Film Festival

In the small city of Orlando, Florida -- surrounded by the theme parks of Disney and Universal -- many of the city's people are surprisingly well versed in independent and contemporary foreign cinema, films like Jupiter's Wife, Bandit Queen, and Pink Flamingos (the John Waters classic is banned from video stores here). Thanks to the Enzian Theater, the nonprofit organization behind the Florida Film Festival, indie films show regularly and often times successfully. The Festival is the city's annual chance for a mega-dose of alterna-cineplex film, and under the proud guidance of Sigrid and Philip Tiedtke and a programming panel of volunteers and staff, this year's crop had many surprises.

The Enzian is a dinner theater where the wait staff serve pitchers of beer and full course meals during the screening and strangely ask for the check exactly two thirds of the way through the film. Never would this work in New York but at the Enzian, it's the bait at the end of the alternative film hook. Other fest films also screened at a unique converted playhouse, the Annie Russel Theatre, on the campus of Rollins College. All the film festival staples of shuttle buses, wide eyed volunteers, and cigar parties ran smoothly, and like the neighboring Fort Lauderdale fest, the Enzian dazzled the locals with celebs and special screenings. Peter Fonda, there for Ulee's Gold, Roger Corman, and William Macy brought out the flash bulbs and press. Films like Star Maps, In the Company of Men, and The Pillow Book played to eager houses, and opening night's The Full Monty -- about a unemployed group of British men who plan their own strip show to raise money -- by the end had a dazzled audience dancing in the aisles as if at a Chippendale's review.

The talk of the fest was the documentaries -- a strong, evenhanded set. Waco: The Rules of Engagement, a slanted examination of the Branch Davidian tragedy, drew the largest crowd including the small number of militia that seem to follow the film around the country. The previous night, at a screening in Atlanta, the film and Q&A afterwards stirred up an angry crowd and prompted one militia member to stand up and yell, "Now that you've seen it, what are you going to do about it!?" Security was heightened at the Annie Russell but no "call to arms" was offered. The doc jury -- Bruce Sinofsky (Brother's Keeper) and Stuart Strutin of Panorama -- gave Kristen Schultz's document of the last four years in the life of a teenage AIDS patient, Before I Sleep, the Grand Jury Prize for best feature doc while Helen Strickler's combustible study of phenomenology, Andre the Giant Has a Posse got the short doc award. Alan Berliner's Nobody's Business took the doc audience award. Berliner said that he'll give it to his father, Oscar, whom the film is lovingly based on: "I'll hand it to him and he'll probably say 'big deal'!"

Hands on a Hardbody was the doc that had most people talking. Director S.R. Bindler and crew turned their Hi-8 video cameras on a small Texas town and a new car lot that holds an annual publicity stunt: 24 names are pulled from a drawing, a fully decked-out new pickup truck is put under a canopy in the middle of the lot, and the participants must stand around it with at least one gloved hand on the truck's body. The last one remaining, the one who hasn't tumbled over from exhaustion or been made crazy through lack of sleep, wins the truck. The competition lasted for close to 96 hours, and the filmmakers were able to compress their footage to an engaging 97 minutes that acts as a harsh comment on individual ego and the rabid fancies of consumerism.

Most Hardbody participants, interviewed in the days before the competition started, claim to have the strongest will and tolerance for that truck -- one lady explained that God had ordained the truck for her and that prayer groups across the state would insure this. Ironically, in the last hours of the competition, she is one of the two left. Wired onto her Walkman, listening and dancing and praying to her pre-recorded gospel songs, she outlasts the Marine next to her, but loses when she inadvertently raises both her hands in a fit of exhaustive rejoicing. By this point the doc has cleverly turned to a much more human note: the motivation and worth of the competition are harshly questioned by the participants; those ousted return to encourage those remaining in a strange kind of solidarity; and the winner, whose personal motives are unknown until the end, reveals what made him stand in place unselfishly for almost 100 hours. The film was honored with a special award for editing.

Notable features were more difficult to spot. The feature Competition was heavy with stories of the uninteresting love lives of young American twentysomethings (mostly of men, all directed by men). Colin Fitz and Blowfish got an extra jolt of press coverage due to their Florida settings but like most of the Competition, had a hard time distinguishing themselves from this indie film blur of tired subject and absent technique. The one significant standout and audience award winner -- Harish Saluja's The Journey, a calm and extremely modest labor of love about a poetic, retired school headmaster from India (Roshan Seth of Ghandi) out of his element in Pittsburgh as he visits his successful son and his new American family. Saluja's first film works best when the headmaster's traditional Indian mannerisms clash with his son's American wife as chauvinistic, while other aspects of his Old-World passion connect with her seven-year-old daughter. Although the film occasionally tripped on almost unavoidable first-film clich»s, it unfolded sweetly and closed with a slow, composed exhale.

Scott Saunders' Lower East Side story, The Headhunter's Sister, garnered the Grand Jury award. The jury -- Peter Broderick of Next Wave Films, Jason Kliot of Open City Films, and indie consultant Bob Hawk -- gave special awards to Mark Schwahn's 35 Miles From Normal and Brian Flemming's Hang Your Dog in the Wind.

Florida Film Festival by Michael Jones
Nantucket Film Festival by Mark Rabinowitz